One of the most exciting elements about NFTs in gaming is the potential for collaboration between artists, brands, and projects. We have already seen affluent brands working with games in web2 — Burberry’s iconic tartan became a skin in China’s most popular game, Honor of Kings, for example — but web3 represents the next step.

With collaborations using NFTs as their vehicle, value, scarcity, ownership, and royalties become formalized and automated, and that’s just to name a few benefits. This not only means that brands can create desirable and exclusive contributions to games, but artists have the opportunity to benefit long-term from their work. Web3 is a collaborative space and I have been looking forward to the start of the trend where more games take the approach we’ve seen with The Sandbox and Decentraland in partnering, but then one step further still by opening to smaller artists too.

Thetan Arena has now opened an initiative that will do just that.

What Is Thetan Arena?

For the best introduction to Thetan Arena, I’d recommend our writer Murtagh’s review. Thetan Arena started life as a mobile MOBA built on the Binance Smart Chain ($BNB), but has grown to be more than that over the last few years, adding other game modes and complexity.

As you can see above, the project has put out some staggering numbers. Total players, according to their website, is now at over 23 million and 1 million daily active users. What impresses me most is the peak concurrent users; 150,000 is up there with many well-known PC games.

The ‘Unlock NFT Power’ Initiative

The Unlock NFT Power program is designed to bring partnerships with outside brands and artists to the game. This will, in essence, be a form of in-game advertising, but with a more palatable twist. Anyone interested can apply using this form. The partnership would allow brands and artists with NFT collections to create custom skins for in-game heroes, emojis, and avatars, generating a lot of exposure.

Although this is certainly the direction I’m hoping to see games go — enabling brands, or moreover, artists — to benefit from other projects in web3, the breakdown of how the financial side works is not public. So, I have some reservations, but presuming artists get their cut of NFT skins sold, this is a great initiative I want to see more of!